<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<html lang="en">
<head>
  <meta name="copyright" content=
  "Copyright (c) IBM Corporation and others 2000, 2011. This page is made available under license. For full details see the LEGAL in the documentation book that contains this page.">
  <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
  <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css">
  <link rel="STYLESHEET" href="../book.css" charset="ISO-8859-1" type="text/css">
  <title>Editing files outside the Workbench</title>
  <script language="JavaScript" src="PLUGINS_ROOT/org.eclipse.help/livehelp.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
  <h1>Editing files outside the Workbench</h1>
  <p>To edit a Workbench resource outside the Workbench:</p>
  <ol>
    <li>Navigate in the file system to the Workbench's installation directory. Go into the workspace directory and open
    the file that you want to edit with the external editor.</li>
    <li>Edit the file as needed. Save and close it as usual.</li>
    <li><em>Important</em>: Go back to the Workbench, right-click the edited file in one of the navigation views, and
    select <b>Refresh</b> from the pop-up menu. The Workbench will perform any necessary build or update operations to
    process the changes that you made outside the Workbench.</li>
  </ol>
  <p><em>Tip</em>: If you work with external editors regularly, you may want to enable auto-refresh. This can be done
  by opening the <a class="command-link" href=
  'javascript:executeCommand("org.eclipse.ui.window.preferences(preferencePageId=org.eclipse.ui.preferencePages.Workspace)")'>
  <img src="PLUGINS_ROOT/org.eclipse.help/command_link.svg" alt="command link"> <b>General &gt; Workspace</b></a>
  preference page, and checking the <strong>Refresh using native hooks or polling</strong> or <strong>Refresh on
  access</strong> option. When at least one of them is enabled, any changes made by external editors will be
  automatically discovered by the Workbench. Depending on the platform this may not happen immediately for
  <strong>Refresh using native hooks or polling</strong>.</p>
  <h3 class="related">Related concepts</h3><a href="../concepts/concepts-6.htm">Editors</a><br>
  <a href="../concepts/concepts-6a.htm">External editors</a>
  <h3 class="related">Related tasks</h3><a href="tasks-46.htm">Opening files for editing</a><br>
  <a href="tasks-51.xhtml">Associating editors with file types</a>
</body>
</html>
